It’s a tough time for so many people, and not only economically. Love is so much harder in these hard times; our nerves are raw, our anxiety is up, our patience is down. I was thinking about this as I cleared my huge, celestial desk about an hour ago, after a sleepless night I can’t explain logically and an anxiety that gripped me, mysteriously, for hours. At about 4 a.m., I happened to look desultorily inside one of my poetry files–more because I was straightening up than looking for a peom. But there, on the top of the pile of poems, was this. It reminded me that that sometimes, just sometimes, Spring arrives and morning comes and all our raging fears and persistent concerns dissolve like yesterday’s snowflakes. This poem, “Suppose,” is by Carbondale, Colorado poet Karen Jane Glenn. You already know how much I like her work. Enjoy.
SUPPOSE
everything is OK. There really is
nothing to worry about. Days go by,
a trainload of marshmallows.
You have no problems;
the sky is clear as vodka.
The rain doesn’t fall, but the oleanders,
the magnolias, the insistent camellias
keep right on blooming.
Winter is banished.
Spring starts over again,
pushing its way out of the earth,
each and every dawn, like a beautiful corpse
that really can rise again.
Your lover is faithful now,
brings champagne every afternoon.
Each evening, under the unchanging stars,
the sex is so good that, even when you try,
you can’t stop coming.
There is no death,
no aging. You stay just as you are.
And if anything bothers you,
it is only the slightest twinge.
You can’t even feel it, as you stare out
across that ever-blue horizon, where the future
goes on and on and on, looking
exactly like today.
